


The Second Time

by erasegrace



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Lies, Mother-Son Relationship, Past Character Death, Police, Robbery, Superheroes, Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 17:05:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12089466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erasegrace/pseuds/erasegrace
Summary: A short story about a superhero who tried to walk away from everything.  It is slightly inspired by Jessica Jones.





	The Second Time

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There are no graphic descriptions, but there is a description of someone seeing another person get shot.

She was encased in a cinder block room, apart from one wall, which had a one-way window, and a door. Candace was seated in a chair that seemed to be the same as the ones that a middle school might have. She was handcuffed to the table like an actual criminal would be, but maybe that was for the best. A man entered the room, he was confident, as are most men in uniform, but this man was different. It wasn’t the uniform that gave him this confidence, but rather the fact that he thought he knew what he was getting himself into. Sitting down across from Candace, he slid a file onto the table. Seeing her name on it, Candace immediately knew what it was from; an accident, that felt like it had happened decades ago, but was only three years past.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened tonight?”

“I already told the police that were there what happened.”

“I’d like to hear it for myself if you don’t mind.” 

She sighed, she knew that she would have to tell the officer the truth, but it didn’t need to be the whole truth. There was one secret that she had kept for too long to let it out now. Quickly thinking through everything that had happened, she began to tell the story to the officer.

“I was on my way to work.” She had only been a block from the pool, when everything happened. She thought it was almost funny that she had gotten so close to a normal day, yet at the last minute, on the last block, everything changed for the worse. 

“I thought I heard something coming from the alley, and I mean, you always hear those horror stories about people getting raped or murdered in alleyways so I thought I should at least see, maybe I could help if something was happening.” It wasn’t a maybe, if somebody was about to be hurt, Candace could have helped. She could have beat up whoever was doing something wrong, and be a hero, unfortunately things don’t always seem to be that simple for her.

“So I looked down there and I see this alley only has one real entrance and exit. The one I’m standing in, and then a fence at the other end of the alley. Anyways, at the other end of the alleyway I saw this lady, and she was with her son.” She had been wearing a dress; she had pearls around her neck. Whoever she was, she clearly had money and a lot of it. Her son, however, looked as if he had just finished with a soccer game. He had mud and grass stains on his pant legs, and looked like he could really do with a nice long nap.

“There were three men surrounding them, one of them had a gun.” It was then when Candace began to look uncomfortable in the interrogation. She had kept her cool thus far, but it was getting to the tricky part, and she wasn’t exactly sure how much she could make the police believe.

“The men didn’t see that I had come down the alley until I was, maybe ten feet, behind them.” It was too late for them at that point she thought. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, everyone was probably safer with her behind bars. She hadn’t hurt anyone before this, but honestly it was just a matter of time until she accidentally pushed someone a little too hard, and they don’t get up.

“One of them came at me, and I just kicked him really hard where the sun don’t shine. He went straight down.” Lie. She could still see it in her mind, like it was happening right then. The men had turned on their heels to stare at her, questioning how she got there without them noticing. The one closest to her, ran at her, and attempted to punch her dead in the face. Unfortunately for him, she was quick. Candace had ducked down, and avoided the fist to the face. She retaliated and swiped at his nose, the second her fist made contact, she felt his nose concave right underneath her fingers.

“Once he fell down, one of his other buddies started yelling at me, I don’t really remember what he was saying, something about hurting me though.” Lie. The other guy didn’t say anything to her; in fact he took a step back, away from her. A short girl that managed to beat up a grown man in one punch was clearly not someone he wanted to tackle head on.

“It was just a freak accident, but he tripped over a pipe while he was walking towards me, and he hit his head on the wall when he fell.” Another lie. She had gone after the guy; she wanted the mother and son to be safe. After she took a step towards him, he had regained his confidence and began approaching her. She slammed his head into the old brick wall to the right of them. Not hard enough to kill, but enough to keep him knocked out for a good long while. 

“When I looked up, to see if I could help the lady, the last man had pulled her in front of him. He had put his gun to her head and-” She cut herself off. Saying it would only make it the truth, which was hard enough when she just had to think about it. Candace could clearly see the woman’s eyes the more she spoke of the situation. Her eyes were bright blue, the shiny black gun resting on her temple seemed to reflect the terror that was clear to anyone who looked at her. 

“And what?”

Candace sharply inhaled, that was it, the part she didn’t want to think about.

“And he pulled the trigger.” She knew that the officer now knew what happened, but that wasn’t enough. There were no words to describe it, and no way anyone could understand it. How the woman’s body fell like a puppet whose strings were cut, or how her son screamed, or the look on the man’s face, as if he had swatted a fly instead of killing a mother. There was no way to communicate this to the police officer, and even if she did, why should they care? All they needed were the facts.

“But there’s more, isn’t there?” 

“Yes. The man took the gun, and hopped over the fence at the back of the alley.” Of course, this wasn’t the whole truth. Before the man had jumped the fence, he had made sure that she wouldn’t follow him. Or rather he thought he had made sure she wouldn’t follow him. He had fired off one shot into her chest. Whether or not he had shot her didn’t matter as much as the man thought it did. Although she was struck by the bullet that was not what stopped her from chasing after the man. It was the cries of the woman’s son, who had lain beside his mother. He was clearly heartbroken, and there didn’t appear to be much Candace could do besides sitting with him, and trying to comfort him. Still, as she sat in the interrogation room, Candace could feel the bullet lodged in her side. It wasn’t painful, more a dull, uncomfortable reminder of the events that had taken place earlier that day.

“So that’s when someone called 911?”

“I suppose, I don’t really know, seeing as it wasn’t me who called.”

“And I guess we’re not supposed to find it suspicious that you have found your way into the middle of a murder investigation, yet again?”

“I had nothing to do with that! Your department even said that you didn’t have any evidence of that. And I’m innocent this time as well.” 

“We’ll see about that.”

“For god’s sake!” Candace shouted angrily. She slammed her hands down on the table, and with a loud snap, the table broke in half, and her handcuffs split down the middle of the chain. She breathed deeply, in an attempt to calm herself down. The last thing she needed was more questions about what happened, both with this and her father.


End file.
